


and our memories defeat us

by sorry_dad



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Declarations Of Love, Graphic Description of Corpses, Guilt, I Tried, Internal Conflict, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Self-Hatred, as i believe we all are intended to be, dark!ed makes appearances, ed is under the impression that he killed oswald effectively, external internal conflict, its an emotional fix it but not a fix it for what has happened, not really at least, too little too late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 03:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10152041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorry_dad/pseuds/sorry_dad
Summary: ed deals with a recurring hallucination of a decomposing oswald that loves him, so very much. he struggles with understanding why he keeps seeing oswald, why his own mind subjects him to this, and maybe he comes to a revelation. maybe he feels guilt.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "but does anyone notice?  
> but does anyone care?  
> and if i had the guts to put this to your head—  
> and would anything matter if you're already dead?  
> and should i be shocked by the last thing you said?  
> before i pull this trigger,  
> your eyes vacant and stained—  
> and in saying you loved me,  
> made things harder at best,  
> and these words changing nothing  
> as your body remains,  
> and there's no room in this hell  
> there's no room in the next,  
> but does anyone notice there's a corpse in this bed?"

It happens for the first time when Edward wakes up from a nightmare. 

He sits up in the bed screaming, hand to his chest as if he had pearls to clutch. Gasping and heaving, he brings himself to curl around his legs, knees brought up to his chest. It doesn't help, nothing helps— he misses Oswald's tea, misses the way he would let it cool before coming into the room, misses just the  _fucking sound_ of someone else in this gigantic house. 

What he gets is nothingness. He gets the sound of the house settling against the heavy rain and the wind. He gets the sound of the trees, the sound of water against the glass of the window, and his own breathing. 

It terrifies him that he's the only living thing in this house. 

If Edward wanted to, he could look out of his window and oversee the cemetery he'd so recently desecrated. The dirt is still upturned, casket now closed in the open grave. Oswald must have intended to return his father's remains and rebury them as if nothing had happened.

Now, the edges of the grave are slipping, mud and debris cover the lid of the casket. Even the gravestone has started to sad, moving slowly toward the gaping hole in the ground. 

All of this is moot because Edward  _doesn't_ want to look. He doesn't want to face what he's done, what he did, what he has to continue to live with. 

When he wakes up from a dream, there's a few seconds, a few blissful seconds, where Edward doesn't remember where he is. He doesn't know what his name is, how old he is, or what's happened at any point in his life. Every single piece of information that he's crammed into his head is unreachable, if only for the few seconds where he sits, tears in his eyes.

Edward holds his breath and clenches his teeth until he isn't afraid anymore— until the shadows no longer frighten him, until the sounds no longer make him jump, until he stops listening out for Oswald's feet. It hurts, even in a way that Edward can't scientifically explain.

He throws himself back against the pillow, stares up at the ceiling and tries to count the bumps in the spackling. Without his glasses, it's a lost cause, but he tries his best to tire himself out again. His heartbeat slowly starts to match the pace at which he's counting imaginary spots, lower and lower.

The beautiful moment where he feels his eyelids droop comes and he turns himself over onto his side. Thank god. 

In the flutter of his eyelids that precedes his final step into sleep, Edward sees someone on the pillow beside him. He gives in, opens his eyes fully. 

Swollen. 

The first thing he notices is how everything seems swollen.  Not on his own face but— Dear god.

The jaw is pressed open by a swollen tongue, chalky white, the eyes swallowed by bruising that matches the blood that has pooled in the back of the head and neck, into the cheeks. He takes it all in, the maceration on the forehead beneath the matted hair, the unnatural positioning of the arms, stiff in front of the torso— hands bound.

"Oswald," despite having nearly no volume, the word still dies in Edward's mouth.

He's driven to sickness. He vomits into the trashcan by the bed, solid and painful. It isn't real, he knows it isn't real— the sheets aren't even wet and he can move the blankets easily —but it feels real enough.

Oswald is still there when he turns back.

The skin on the tips of his fingers has burst like the ends of sausages, raw tissue and muscle contrasting to the blood-drained skin. Seaweed is wrapped around the binding that keeps his hands together, sliding into the raw spots where his hands have continued to rub. The rope has eaten away at the skin of his wrists, bit into the muscle, made its own little path into the fleshy, hidden parts of Oswald's arms. 

His hair has come out in places— small parts of it are missing, and upon further investigation, so is the skin it would be connected to. He's missing fingernails, ones once so well manicured to avoid showing how much Oswald would bite. The nail beds are the same white as his hands, almost comedically pale. 

Edward doesn't dare reach out, doesn't dare risk possibly disturbing the bloated creature beside him. Dead or not, his hallucinations never seem to rely on the rules of nature— because that's all this is, a hallucination.

 _"You really are one sick fuck,"_ across the room, he sees himself standing there, eyeing the body in the bed,  _"imagining your boyfriend all dead and nasty. That's gross."_

"Shut up." Edward puts his head back down on the pillow, tries not to focus on the fact that there's something soggy and slipping a few inches away. He forces his eyes shut, squeezes them until he sees colors.

 _"You can't just will your guilt away, you know,"_ his voice echoes across the room, like a glitched DVD playing on underwater speakers in surround sound.  _"He was right. It really does change you."_

"What does?"

 _"The cold-blooded murder of someone you love."_ The projection imitates Oswald's shaking voice, the way it cracks and flattens— just like it did at the docks. Edward feels bile rise up in his throat once more.

He opens his eyes so he'll be able to see the trash can when he inevitably vomits again, but he's met with movement. 

With a face so close to his, Edward tries to imagine the way Oswald's sparkling green eyes would look in the morning sun— tries to imagine the sun from the window hitting them at just the right angle. He thinks about the way Oswald's eyes would shine when he got especially emotional, as if he wanted to cry; the way his voice would soften. Edward imagines he would have sounded especially soft in the mornings, half-awake and comfortable in his bed. 

Where he expects something like fresh cut grass, he's met with spoiled milk. Oswald's eyes have filmed over, sightless and lumpy. At this level of decomposition, they shouldn't be able to roll around in the sockets like they do, but his eyes find Edward's face far too quickly.

It's like a cataract, but it's spread into the once pristine whites of Oswald's eyes. It's disgusting, how they look like they're ready to burst at any moment, ready to spill out onto the pillowcase Edward hasn't washed since he died. 

His eyes quiver in their sockets, twitching over Edward's face, moving with little focus, like the beginning of a seizure. The movement makes it seem like all of Oswald's face is moving, like every muscle is twitching beneath the over-hydrated skin that threatens to slip right off. 

When his eyes stop moving, sound reverberates within his mouth. The whole entire specter moves, sits up so that it can properly look down on Edward, where he's frozen in place. He's never felt fear like this before.

"I love you," the words spill out, accompanied by filthy water and blood. It all flows from around Oswald's tongue, far too much for a human mouth to hold, yet it never seems to end. Edward can feel phantom wetness on his leg, feels it crawling up the blanket he's practically hiding beneath; he can smell the saltwater and scent of fish, the stink he couldn't get out of his clothes after that day on the docks. "I love you, I love you, I love you," even with a ruined tongue and teeth that threaten to fall out, Oswald's voice still sounds exactly how it ought to— crisp with a trained clarity, a heavy effort to suppress an accent all too obvious. The longer Oswald speaks the louder his voice gets; it keeps going until Edward can feel it in his skull, repeating in his ears like an echo.

It just keeps going, Oswald's voice turns into a type of siren, the warning reminder of what Edward did. What he's done too many times. He can't escape it, no matter what he does. It feels like the sound is coming from inside his head, reverberating around his brain and out of his ears. 

Edward doesn't get any sleep that night.

* * *

Oswald shows up at random, after that.

Sometimes Edward can ignore it, sometimes he can pretend it isn't happening— it's best when he's silent. The times where Oswald doesn't speak make it the least painful because there's no headache that comes to follow. 

He never says anything else, never stops once he starts.

When Edward goes to a meeting, sitting beside Barbara as she talks business agreements with lesser gang leaders.  _"I love you, I love you, I love you."_ As he walks back to the mansion after getting dinner alone, leftovers in hand because the sight of Oswald across the table from him made him lose his appetite.  _"I love you, I love you, I love you."_ While he's shaving for the first time in far too long, Oswald's reflection oozing water and blood into his bound and rotting hands.  _"I love you, I love you, I love you."_

When Edward makes an effort to be normal, ventures out to see a movie at a theater, sitting in the middle seat— Oswald fills the space beside him, not able to fill the seat itself, but still there.

Edward can't stop focusing on the decaying state of Oswald's clothes, the smell that continues to come with him, the sound of liquids hitting the floor as a constant stream. He sneaks a glance to the left, so short it barely happens, but he sees Oswald's clouded eyes trained on him.

He sits there, festers in his own misery, and wonders just how much longer he's going to have to deal with this. How long will it be until Oswald stops being around every corner, how long will it be until he finally stops feeling guilty about someone who betrayed him?

 _"How long until you accept that you're a hypocritical asshole for thinking that he did something unthinkable, Mister 'I'll stab the guy my crush likes and then date her under false pretenses and then kill her when she wants to tell on me'?"_ Oh his right, he can barely make out the shape of his own body in the chair next to him.  _"Because that's probably how long it'll take."_ When Edward opens his mouth to refute the statement, to defend his actions, he stops himself because of his surroundings. The other version of him rolls his eyes expertly.  _"Yeah, I know. That was different. I've heard that already."_

Edward suppresses the need to hush the image next to him but instead sends a long-suffering glare.

 _"I'm just saying—"_ the voice stops, cuts short as it moves to the other side of Oswald,  _"you're the one imagining him. Somewhere deep down,"_ the voice turns into Oswald's, comes from the terrible misrepresentation that's sitting next to him,  _"you know why you're doing this to yourself._ _"_ For the first time, the voice sounds as awful as it should. It barely sounds like words around Oswald's tongue, around the rotting flesh of his inner cheeks, around the jaw that's unwilling to move. Edward hears the words in his own head, or maybe that's where they're born, and he knows exactly what he's hearing. 

He runs out of the theater with a hand over his mouth, barely makes it to the bathroom, vomiting into the sink. He expects to see Oswald in the mirror, and he does, but the man looks sympathetic— as sympathetic as he can, at least, with his drooping skin and bloody lips. 

Edward vomits again and blames his tears on the pain of the acid in his throat.

He knows he's lying to himself. 

* * *

Edward starts trying to work on his own. After a botched (though barely escaped) murder attempt by Barbara, whom he had started to trust, he finds himself holed up in the mansion.

Running an empire alone is much harder than Oswald had made it seem in the past. 

For nights on end, Edward sleeps in his office, slumped onto the desk he wakes up to work at. He makes plan after plan, obsesses over every detail until he finds a reason why it won't work. He doesn't shower, he doesn't change clothes, just sits and festers and works. 

 _"I love you, I love you, I love you,"_ Oswald's been going for what Edward thinks is nearly an hour, announced himself by the smell that has evolved from fish and salt to simply  _death._ His clothes barely look like clothes anymore, one of his eyes is gone, teeth have gone missing alongside almost all of his hair and scalp— he's so disgusting that Edward can't look at him, not for very long. (It's easier without his glasses, but he can't convince himself everything is okay anymore; not now that Oswald is hairless.)  _"I love you, I love you, **I love you, I love you**_ _ **.** " _

Edward turns around, knocks his chair over and nearly falls in the process. He leaves his glasses on the desk because he knows he doesn't need them, knows they'll only make this worse. 

"I  _know_ you do! I know, I know, I know—" he grips the sides of his head, fingers sliding into his greasy hair and grabbing hold, "You can stop, now. I feel guilty, I feel bad, I regret it— I loved you, too. Is that the point?" On the edge of his desk, Edward sees his mirror image perched, hand pressed to his chest in mock amazement. His anger and upset is fueled when the imitation's hair is still perfectly clean and combed, though just as long as his has come to be. How  _dare_ he. "Did you need to hear it? Need to know how miserable I am? Does it bring you some kind of satisfaction?  _How can it?_ _"_ Edward picks up a paperweight, likely expensive, and throws it against the wall so hard that the paneling dents. "You're part of me! What do I need to accept? Was it the guilt, the love; was it both? I'm sorry! I shouldn't have done it! Why are you still here?" He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut and nearly sobs outright because it's all too much for him. Love is so simple for him, he knows how it feels, knows how he usually approaches it; hesitantly. Why did it have to be so hard, this time? It isn't until he's stopped crying that he realizes he doesn't hear Oswald's voice anymore. 

Edward opens his eyes, sees that both the Oswald and the mimic are gone. Fractured pieces of the wall fall to the ground and the sound echoes in the office, bouncing off of the bookshelves and the window. 

He's the only living thing in the house, still. That hasn't changed— it's been true the whole time. It hits him especially hard, now. 

It's silent. He hears the sound of the house settling against a breeze. He hears the sound of the trees, the sound of the birds outside, and his own breathing. 

He decides to take a shower. 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> although this doesn't have a happy ending, you can imagine that oswald returns soon after, and ed is in such a place after this experience that he's capable of vocalizing his emotions to oswald. i think that's really important to ed, having time to actually understand himself. emotions are hard, i get it. (they're not so hard for me that i kill people, but hey. we all have our vices.)
> 
> based loosely on a post by tumblr user vertibird about hallucination!wald with cloudy eyes and dripping clothes and only saying "I love you," and nothing else + the lyric i quoted at the beginning, from Early Sunsets Over Monroeville, which is a my chemical romance song (which im fairly certain is about zombies, but it's whatever)
> 
> you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find an article that describes what a corpse looks like after being in water— even the image searches are difficult. i wouldn't have expected that before writing this. 
> 
> idk how i feel about this anymore, to be completely honest, i'm just glad i got it out of my system 
> 
> thanks for reading! (:
> 
> talk to me on tumblr, i'm mayor-crumblepot !!


End file.
